


The Peacetime Weapon

by Nestra



Category: The Windrose Chronicles - Barbara Hambly
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-20
Updated: 2008-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 04:45:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1632302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nestra/pseuds/Nestra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It seemed that he wasn't suited for anything -- too broken to be a sasennan, and too much a sasennan to be anything else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Peacetime Weapon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Edo no Hana (Edonohana)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Edonohana/gifts).



> Thanks to shrift and grit kitty for beta.

For months after Antyrg saved his life, Caris considered killing himself.

Suicide was no shame for a sasennan, especially not for one who was maimed and had betrayed every vow he'd ever made. To obey the Council of Wizards. To protect his grandfather. To bury his will and his desires deep inside of himself until they ceased to exist.

The memory of those vows seemed gray and distant, buried under the chaotic events of the past year. Everything he had known was gone -- not just his grandfather, but his friends and his home. The small room he shared with three other sasenna, with its uncomfortable bed and the ceiling that was just an inch too low. No telling what they'd done with his few possessions, if anyone had even been back to the Mages' Yard.

He thought about going back to the Wheatlands, but he was no more suited for farm life than he had ever been, and he didn't need to see pity and disappointment warring in his mother's eyes.

It seemed that he wasn't suited for anything -- too broken to be a sasennan, and too much a sasennan to be anything else.

* * *

"You're leaving?"

"I can't stay here." Caris silently cursed his maimed hand as he shoved his few belongings into a satchel. He left his weapons sitting in a corner of the small room where he'd spent weeks recovering. They lay deserted, like unwanted firewood at the height of summer.

"You could," Pella said, but she sounded like she didn't believe the words herself. She was showing her pregnancy, her body swelling with the Regent's heir. Kyssha sat on the floor by the waterfall of her skirts.

"I don't...I can't..." He took a shuddering breath that hurt his lungs. "Pella, everything's different now."

Her deep voice was quiet in the early morning stillness. "Pharos practically gave us his blessing."

"I can't accept permission from another man to be with his wife," Caris snapped. "Especially not the Regent of the Realm."

Pella half-turned away from him into the shadows of the hallway. "Do you care about what I want, or am I just the Regent's wife to you?"

"You know I care," Caris sighed, sitting down heavily on the little bed. "But too much has changed. I shouldn't even be alive." He was tired, his body exhausted from nearly dying, and weary in his heart from the overwhelming emotions of the past months. Grief, rage, elation, and confusion all warred inside him, and he wasn't prepared to handle any of them, let alone all of them at once.

"Where will you go?"

"Kymil, at least for now." Kyssha trotted over to him and stood at his feet, staring up at him with the patient expectancy of dogs. He leaned down and stroked her head with his left hand. Until he could find a way of disguising his right hand, he would keep it in his pocket.

* * *

He found a boarding house in Fenside, one of Kymil's more dubious neighborhoods. The rent was among the lowest to be found in the city, but it didn't matter how cheap it was if he had no money.

He scouted out enough odd jobs to pay for the first few weeks, the kind of work he would have looked down on before his injury. He swept doorsteps and shoveled manure, unloaded carts, and tried to exhaust himself doing everything short of begging.

Despite his efforts to remain anonymous, word still got around.

"Used to be sasennan, eh?" The old woman in the noodle cart on the corner nodded at him knowingly. Caris scowled at her and crossed to the other side of the street.

* * *

When Suraklin made the gun explode in his hand, the first thing Caris thought was that he'd never hold a sword again. The bloody remains of his fingers throbbed with pain. They would never again wrap around a hilt; the weight of the sword would never again pull at his shoulder. He should have been more concerned about dying, as he'd so very nearly done, but as his vision had dimmed, he'd mourned most the feel of a sword in his hand.

* * *

The noodle shop vendor seemed to have taken a liking to him, as if he were a stray dog that hung around her shop and begged for scraps. Caris was too polite to be outright rude to her, and nothing else dented her enthusiasm.

"Still got one hand, don't you? Why couldn't you fight? Rich folk and fools still need bodyguards."

"I can't hold a sword any more," Caris said, grabbing his food and walking away. 

The next time, she continued the conversation as if there hadn't been an interruption. "Why can't you hold a sword?"

Caris sighed. She reminded him a little of Aunt Min, with the air of privilege that the elderly often acquired. "The balance is different, and I wouldn't have my other hand to brace it when I needed the support. Besides, there's no one to train with me, no one to teach me."

"Hmph," the old woman sniffed, ladling extra noodles into his portion. "Folks still die if you stick a sword in them, no matter what hand you got it in."

* * *

It was late spring when the birth of the Heir was announced. Emperor Hieraldus had finally died, after twenty-five years of senility, and Pharos had been crowned ruler of Ferryth two days after the funeral.

It was a boy, of course, named Hanoris Destramor. Caris knew that Pella would be ecstatic, and tried not to imagine the sight of her cradling her child.

* * *

The landlady banged on his door at dawn. "Rent!"

Caris woke immediately from his light sleep and cursed under his breath at her. She made the rounds every week at the most inconvenient times, when she had the best chance of catching her tenants in their cramped rooms.

He opened the door and dropped the coins in her calloused palm; she closed her fingers around them and said, "Thanks, love."

He moved to shut the door, but she stepped forward to stop him. "Some people around here say that you used to be a sasennan."

"Not any more."

"I know." She studied him, the light blue of her eyes like winter water. "There's others that say you studied with a healer."

Caris drew a breath and tried to stifle the morass of rage and grief that welled within him. Being a healer reminded him of his grandfather, of Antryg, both dead. Both murdered by Suraklin.

The woman saw him tense and held up a placating hand. "No one's asking you. But there's a child on the first floor that's sick with the cough. Her mother and father tried waiting it out, but they don't know what to do."

"And you think I can help them?"

"Yes," she said. "I don't know if you will, but it's none of my business."

* * *

Caris went back to bed and fell into an uneasy sleep. He heard a voice reciting, and it was somehow Antryg's deep baritone and his grandfather's lighter voice at the same time. "Elderberry. Chamomile. Ginger root. Peppermint. Any of these may relieve the symptoms of congestion and prevent the illness from developing into pneumonia."

When he woke again, the sun was shining in through his window. If he listened closely, through all the noise of the people outside, cursing at recalcitrant donkeys, calling out to each other, advertising their wares to passersby, he thought he could hear the sound of a thin, high cough.

He spat out a dockyard oath, kicked the light covers away from him, and pulled on his boots.

* * *

"Thank you," the girl's father said, clasping Caris' hand. "Thank you so much. We can't pay you, but we have some bread and cheese."

"Take it," her mother said, wrapping it in a cloth.

"You still need to eat," Caris said, uneasy with the praise.

"So do you, and we know those herbs cost you something. Just -- please, take it."

In their eyes, Caris saw wounded pride, something he recognized easily. To refuse would make them feel even worse, and he'd had to walk far to find a stall selling elderberries.

He took the food in his left hand and moved to wave to the girl in the room's one bed. He stopped when his maimed hand moved into his sight, but the girl didn't flinch, just smiled weakly at him.

* * *

Word got around despite Caris' quiet insistence that it not. Soon, other tenants in his building were coming to ask him questions about how to cure their rheumatism, their coughs, their cuts and bruises. Caris chased away the one fool who asked him for a love-philter, but helped the others. Sometimes people had enough money to give him a coin or two, but just as often, they paid him in trade.

Then the news spread to the neighborhood. Gray Molly, the noodle vendor, came up to his room one day to ask him whether her wrist was broken or not. He splinted it and ignored her teasing.

Soon enough, people were calling him "Healer" in the street, and the blackness that had filled him since his grandfather's death started to ease. He didn't even mind when people discussed the Emperor's wife and the Heir, or mentioned that they were returning to Larkmoor for the winter.

* * *

From his window, Caris could see the skinny dog in the alley, nosing through the trash. He watched in silence and darkness; he still had his skills and the small spark of magic that allowed him to see in the pitch-black night.

The dog pawed at something in the stinking mud and then leaned down to prod at it with its nose. A door slammed in one of the other houses that faced the alley, and the dog skittered away in alarm.

It was back the next night, and the next. On the fourth night, Caris waited at the mouth of the alley with some dried meat. The dog came trotting around a corner, saw Caris, and shied away, but Caris held the meat out, and the dog lifted its nose and sniffed.

"Come here," Caris said. "I won't hurt you."

The dog cocked its head at the sound of his voice, then took a few tentative steps forward. When Caris remained still, it stretched out its neck to take the meat from his hand. Caris gently petted its head and stroked its straw-colored coat while it chewed, and by the time the food was gone, they were fast friends.

The landlady glared at him when he brought the dog inside, but Caris stared her down. He named the dog Cob. 

* * *

The sound of a knock at his door had become so familiar that Caris didn't even wonder who it could be. Cob let out a short bark but stayed where he was at the foot of Caris' bed. Caris opened the door and was surprised to see a woman wearing a veil and wrapped in a voluminous black cape, but he stood aside to let her enter.

His heart started beating faster even before he saw the heavy fall of black hair down her back. She lifted her veil.

"Caris," Pella murmured. She stepped forward, sure of her welcome, and Caris opened his arms to her.

* * *

"What are you doing here?" They sat next to each other on the bed, the only seating that the room afforded. Cob nosed through Pella's skirts until a word from Caris sent him to lie back down.

"It actually wasn't very hard to find you," she said. "I'd hoped you were still in Kymil, and when I asked the servants to check around, this side of town was buzzing with talk of a healer who used to be a sasennan."

Caris sighed. "Everyone talks."

"They're very protective of you, actually. One of the servants was almost beaten when they thought he was a debt collector." She smiled when Caris chuckled. "I think that might be the first time I've ever heard you laugh."

"No one's had much to laugh about lately."

"No," she agreed. "You should meet my son. He's a very happy child. He makes me laugh all the time."

"That's good," he replied, feeling inane, sitting in a cheap room in Fenside, making small talk with the Emperor's wife. They were silent for a few moments until Pella laid her head on his shoulder. He sighed and wrapped his arm around her.

"I'm sorry, Pella."

"I know."

"It was...it was like being blind, and then suddenly being able to see. Everything was just too much." He swallowed, feeling like his heart would pound out of his chest. All this time, and she still had the power to make his mouth dry.

"And now?"

He tangled his fingers in her thick hair and caressed the nape of her neck. "Now it's like I can finally see colors again."

She lifted her head and kissed him, and the knot in his chest that had ached since his grandfather's death seemed to melt away.

"Will you come live at Larkmoor?" Pella asked. "Hanoris and I are going to spend most of our time there, away from Court."

He shook his head. "I can't live with you. Besides, there are people here who depend on me."

She moved away, and his arm fell from her shoulders. "Caris, you don't have to be so damned stubborn--"

"But I could come visit," he said. "And you can visit me."

"People will gossip," she said, but she was smiling when she turned to face him.

He touched her face, her skin like satin against his palm. "I don't care. I shouldn't be alive, but I am. I shouldn't be a healer, but I am. I shouldn't be in love with the Emperor's wife--"

"But you are," Pella said, taking his hands -- both of them -- in hers. 

 


End file.
